Friday, January 19, 2007

North Korea misusing UN funds

Should anyone be surprised that North Korea is misusing UN funds? The UN, of course, didn't want anyone to know that they had misplaced their trust, so they've kept this abuse secret since 1999, at least.

If Mark Wallace hadn't been so insistent on seeing such "management tools" as audit reports, the UN could have kept this hidden.

"Wallace relates in his letter that whenever the auditors, contracted from the consulting firm KPMG, tried to discover what was going wrong, they were either limited in what they were allowed to investigate, or they were forced to accept “sham” audits done by the North Koreans themselves."The picture painted by the auditors, according to Wallace, shows a U.N. agency that 'operated in blatant violation of U.N. rules.'"

But why should the UN care if Kim Jong-Il takes that money and uses it to develop nuclear weapons? After all, most of it is US money, anyway?

Wallace sent a letter to Melkert asking for a full audit and outlining some of the problems he found.

"A representative speaking for Ban Ki-Moon announced Friday that in response to the allegations regarding North Korea and the UNDP, the secretary-general has called for 'an urgent, systemwide and external inquiry into all activities done around the globe done by the U.N. funds and programs.'" It's a start, but what will be done to punish North Korea? More empty threats of sanctions? This is yet another reason the US needs to pull out of the UN. no more US funding, no more headquarters in the US, and a lot fewer problems like this.

Hopefully Ban Ki-Moon will get the UN to thoroughly address the problem, but I fear it will continue to do more of the same.